Fun ad-hoc science lesson today, courtesy of Ben Goldacre (http://www.badscience.net) videos. This required pausing a lot to explain vocabulary ("placebo" & "nocebo" I explained in advance) and repeating for the kids to catch Ben's British accent (the kids know how to say many Tube stop names in British... Tottenham and Cockfosters being their favorites... but other than that they still hear through American ears...).
http://www.badscience.net/2010/12/im-doing-this-awesome-massive-nerd-tour/
The kids really thought it was funny to hear about pacemakers working... even before they got turned on. And how a placebo pill with more formal packaging works better than one with worse packaging (that one I told them about from Ben's book, not in the video).
And then this one was a bit longer, a debate on homeopathic medicine: http://www.badscience.net/2006/12/homeopathy-video-stream/
This second video was a good way to introduce them to what "statistically significant" means and what "meta-analysis" is. The best tidbit I thought: Why did homeopathy appear to do well against cholera in the 19th century? Because the "conventional" medicine of the time (bloodletting) happened to do bad. Talk about backhanded compliments, but Goldacre nailed it when he said something akin to "sure I recommend homeopathy when the conventional medicine does no good, and may actually have bad side effects... since we know that homeopathy is no different than a placebo, and placebos can actually do some good".
Fun day.
Off to a game of Pandemic over dinner...
-- Dean
http://www.badscience.net/2010/12/im-doing-this-awesome-massive-nerd-tour/
The kids really thought it was funny to hear about pacemakers working... even before they got turned on. And how a placebo pill with more formal packaging works better than one with worse packaging (that one I told them about from Ben's book, not in the video).
And then this one was a bit longer, a debate on homeopathic medicine: http://www.badscience.net/2006/12/homeopathy-video-stream/
This second video was a good way to introduce them to what "statistically significant" means and what "meta-analysis" is. The best tidbit I thought: Why did homeopathy appear to do well against cholera in the 19th century? Because the "conventional" medicine of the time (bloodletting) happened to do bad. Talk about backhanded compliments, but Goldacre nailed it when he said something akin to "sure I recommend homeopathy when the conventional medicine does no good, and may actually have bad side effects... since we know that homeopathy is no different than a placebo, and placebos can actually do some good".
Fun day.
Off to a game of Pandemic over dinner...
-- Dean
I'll have to share these discussions with David and Abe! And Pandemic is one of our favorite games, too. A friend just told us about Pandemic 2--where you get to be the disease!
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